Energy and it’s importance in daily life

Awake and ready

Paramhansa Yogananda has written that the right exercise of will, Energization Exercises, recharges dying tissue cells and worn out mental facilities and helps form billions of new cells. These exercises are the cornerstone of the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. Doing them make you feel Awake and ready. He used to walk into the hall and ask everyone – How IS everybody? And they used to answer – Awake and ready! How FEELS everybody? Awake and Ready!

Through these exercises, all the various tissues, bones, muscle, connective nerve and all are proportionately formed. Circulation, respiration, digestion and all other involuntary processes of the body are harmonized and invigorated and the mind is clarified. These exercises are a healing balm for nervous abnormalities, stomach, abdominal problems, headaches, rheumatism…Brain power and memory are increased.

Bring in your will
By the right use of your will, bringing in prana life force from all around you, animates everything around you. It also animates our bodies. We can say that we’re animated and we’re fed through food and water and oxygen but these have to be converted into prana to be able to charge our body.
We are talking about how to charge the body from the prana itself. We have unlimited energy at our access but everyone’s fatigued, tired and can’t get off of the couch.

I read a fascinating story just recently online. It happened a few years ago. There was a little boy who had run out into the street to get his ball he was playing with. He was hit by a car and he was pinned up under the car. All they could see was his little legs just flapping. Two ladies who were working in their gardens ran out. They picked up the front end of the car and got that little boy out and saved his life.

Where did they get the strength to lift up a car? We have that strength. We also call it a second wind. You get more energy to be able to do whatever you want to do. This energy is at our demand. If we demand it to come, if we will it to come, we can have it now.

Why do we need more energy?
First of all, physically, if we have a flow of energy, it’s like getting a river flowing of energy, of prana, through our body. Otherwise we have stagnant energy, like a stagnant pond – that means the energy (water) is not flowing properly.

What happens then in the human body is that illnesses, ailments, diseases come. If you’re sick, if you have more energy, you can get them out of the way quicker. Otherwise, they tend to linger.

Physically, we want to have more energy to flow through our bodies so that our posture is better, our eyes are bright, our voice is strong. If we can have more energy, we’re more alive in life physically.

Mentally, we can have more inspiration, insights, answers, solutions, creativity. We’re able to know what the answers are to things in our work and in everything that we do.

Spiritually, we’re able to have more access to our highest potential; to the super conscious level of our being, not just the conscious level (what we’re working on now, speaking and analyzing). Not the subconscious level – where we dream and sleep. But we’re able to lift ourselves up to a higher level – the super-consciousness. Energy helps us to just launch ourselves up and to reach the heights of what we want to do, what and how we want to think. We become more successful, more prosperous.

Ignite Yourself
Yogananda said something very interesting to a man who came to visit him. He said, “You’re jinxed…you’ve jinxed yourself.” It means that the man had a low energy. He didn’t have energy that would help him to rise up, to meet challenges, to face things that were going wrong, to be able to figure things out.

We can de-jinx ourselves by doing particular practices that help us to strengthen our energy and bring in a stronger flow. That flow comes in through the medulla oblongata at the base of the skull. That’s where prana is entering the body. It is the main source; the reservoir of our energy. If we can do particular practices that Yogananda gave, we will be able to enhance that flow.

There are many things that we can do like ayurvedic treatments, get a very good massage, have medicines, etc but those things are all outside of ourselves. What the great masters taught was what is inside of yourself; how can you ignite what’s already there, instead of someone else giving you, or doing for you or healing you. This is self-healing.

Yogananda ji taught a series of exercises called Energization Exercises or the recharging exercises which help you to draw in prana (life force) into your cells, muscles, tissues and charge the body battery. We do them, on this path, every day at least once. They take 12 minutes or so and you can learn them through Ananda Sangha.

There’s also a wonderful series of five exercises which are called the Superconscious Living Exercises – living with higher awareness, highest potential, in the superconsciousness. They are movement with a positive affirmation.

There is an exercise that is very helpful, Paramhansa Yogananda said, in the mornings – before you get out of bed, especially, if it’s hard; it’s winter time and you don’t feel like getting up. To do this, inhale, tense your whole body and exhale before you get up. It can be done two to five times or however many times you need to be able to get up. This is a fabulous exercise. You can also do that lying down; you can do it sitting in the chair, at work to energize the body.

We have Ananda Yoga. We do the yoga postures every day to be able to send the current of energy harmoniously, all throughout, every part of the body and we do them with affirmations- “I am calm, I am poised” as you do the yoga postures. Instead of doing them like calisthenics, jumping in and jumping out of a pose and going quickly, do them nice and slowly like a spiritual dance, like meditation in motion.

One of the other things Yogananda recommended is to do exercise. Exercise until you break a sweat.
Find something that you can do that helps you to get energy moving. If you have more energy, you have a better, healthy, uplifted, safe and protected life.

Aum tat sat is the exercise that Yogananda taught for protection – bringing your hands forward and back, in front of you and visualize light. Touch the hands forward and back and say out loud in your mind – Aum Tat Sat. Which means you’re surrounding yourself with God’s vibrations.

These are all ways that can help you to get more energy. Excerpt of a talk on Energy and Magnetism by Nayaswami Dhyana
You can watch the full video here : https://youtu.be/JA5sXURNSmM

You can watch a video on the Energisation exercises here:

The teachings she is referring to, is from the book: How to Achieve Glowing Health and Vitality
by Paramhansa Yogananda. You can buy a copy of this book from www.anandapublications.com